HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook • Hacker News Board

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#101

Post by maym86 » Sat, Aug 18, 2018, 9:04 PM UTC

quotemstr wrote: post #99

maym86 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but the point is Facebook should be taking minimum steps to actively avoid descrimination. It currently is not. Perfect shouldn't be the enemy of the good and they can do better.

I'm not sure people understand the inevitable progression here. Step 1: HUD files a complaint against Facebook for allowing ad targeting based on certain criteria. Step 2: Facebook bans advertising targeting based on the criteria in the HUD complaint. Step 3: Advertisers react by targeting based on demographic correlates of the categories from step #1. Step 4: HUD notices that ads are still getting delivered more to…

So what about your argument means they shouldn't handle the explicit descrimination cases on their platform better? Just because there might be a fuzzy case in they future why shouldn't they handle the clear cases now?

FYI these are the specific points they are going after:

-display housing ads either only to men or women;

-not show ads to Facebook users interested in an "assistance dog," "mobility scooter," "accessibility" or "deaf culture";

-not show ads to users whom Facebook categorizes as interested in "child care" or "parenting," or show ads only to users with children above a specified age;

-to display/not display ads to users whom Facebook categorizes as interested in a particular place of worship, religion or tenet, such as the "Christian Church," "Sikhism," "Hinduism," or the "Bible."

-not show ads to users whom Facebook categorizes as interested in "Latin America," "Canada," "Southeast Asia," "China," "Honduras," or "Somalia."

-draw a red line around zip codes and then not display ads to Facebook users who live in specific zip codes.

Pretty damn clear: gender, race, disability and religion.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#102

Post by bdcravens » Sat, Aug 18, 2018, 9:08 PM UTC

briandear wrote: post #45

austincheney wrote: post #31

Here are the likely relevant laws in question: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Housing_Act * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964 By law you cannot discriminate by any designation of protected class, which includes not only parties to a business transaction but also messaging and opportunities there upon. I do understand why Facebook would allow ad display filtering by race and other demographi…

My question would be if an advertiser advertised housing in a demographically targeted publication, for example, a publication focused only on single gay men, if that would necessarily function as discrimination since single mothers wouldn’t be reading that publication, nor those ads. Facebook allows demographic targeting that just happens to be more “effective,” but no more discriminatory that the way conventional t…

> It seems that as long as the housing and the ad content itself weren’t discriminatory, the law would seem to be upheld.

That's not the issue. The issue is the application of demographics filters. While most publications have a self-selecting audience, the publications themselves do not apply those kind of filters, especially with regard to showing advertising content to a subset of readers.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#103

Post by burkaman » Sat, Aug 18, 2018, 9:09 PM UTC

TangoTrotFox wrote: post #87

burkaman wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.justice.gov/crt/fair-housing-act-2 Sec. 804 (c): > To make, print, or publish, or cause to be made, printed, or published any notice, statement, or advertisement, with respect to the sale or rental of a dwelling that indicates any preference, limitation, or discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status, or national origin, or an intention to make any such preference, limita…

Looks like if this goes to trial it's all going to hinge on exactly what "To publish an advertisement, with respect to the sale or rental of a dwelling, with an intention to make a preference based on race, color, ..." means. To me that seems quite clearly to refer to the ad itself - that the ad cannot make a preference, implicitly or explicitly, for any group. However, who the ad is shown to would seem to be another…

Yes, your examples are potentially unlawful. See HUD's guidelines here: https://www.hud.gov/sites/documents/DOC_7781.PDF

> § 109.25 Selective use of advertising media or content.

> (a) Selective geographic advertisements. Such selective use may involve the strategic placement of billboards; brochure advertisements distributed within a limited geographic area by hand or in the mail; advertising in particular geographic coverage editions of major metropolitan newspapers or in newspapers of limited circulation which are mainly advertising vehicles for reaching a particular segment of the community; or displays or announcements available only in selected sales offices.

If this sounds burdensome, it's supposed to be, changing society and correcting centuries of inequality and discrimination requires significant active effort.

Also remember that intent and reasonable expectations matter. You as an individual with limited means and no legal advice would be held to a different standard than Facebook, a corporation with many orders of magnitude more responsibility.

Finally, remember that law is not code. The Fair Housing Act is a tool to be used judiciously by humans to correct wrongs, not a precise standard that can be applied in the same way to every situation. It's not possible to write a law that anticipates every possible scenario, that's why we write relatively vague laws and involve humans at every step of the process.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#104

Post by sincerely » Sat, Aug 18, 2018, 9:10 PM UTC

dominotw wrote: post #22

sincerely wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, this doesn't seem like an issue of algorithms at all.

I was reading the list you edited out and I was like "yeah I don't want to live next to any of those", I wish there was app for doing the reverse about your neighbors before you rent a place. Then I felt bad for thinking that thought.

For what it's worth, I edited it out because I couldn't figure out the formatting!

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#105

Post by quadrangle » Sat, Aug 18, 2018, 9:11 PM UTC

quotemstr wrote: post #80

wcrichton wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It stops at the product, no? It seems more acceptable to target advertisements for toys than housing.

Should Facebook be liable for allowing an advertiser to target a housing ad at people with preferences for organic food?

Our legal system will not hold Facebook liable for a case like that.

Should?? Like how things ought to be with the world? Facebook shouldn't even know who prefers organic food. There should be nothing tying that preference to any other aspect of people's lives. Facebook should be more like Reddit where people can have whatever accounts they want and can interact on organic food topics without identifying themselves or tying that preference to other interests. Or maybe Facebook should have an explicit opt-in for users to choose what they're okay with being used for ads… … should? everyone should use an adblocker and block Facebook's ads. Also, Facebook should offer a service where you can choose to portray yourself as whatever mix of qualities you want to set for each time you search for something. So anyone should be able to see what the algorithm delivers for a set of characteristics they can adjust at will…

Also, I should stop procrastinating on HN

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#106

Post by sincerely » Sat, Aug 18, 2018, 9:16 PM UTC

quotemstr wrote: post #81

sincerely wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe there's something inherently wrong with targeted ads...

Is it inherently wrong to publish an ad in the Wall Street Journal and not then publish the same ad in Teen Vogue?

No, which suggests to me that something changes when you cross from print advertising to digital advertising, but I'm not sure what.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#107

Post by xphilter » Sat, Aug 18, 2018, 9:16 PM UTC

vilhelm_s wrote: post #58

yardie wrote: post #26

How did they not see this coming. Are they not familiar with another dotcom called Craigslist who had to deal with this very same regulation years ago. Their counsel either wasn't aware of what FB marketplace was doing or didn't know about FHA laws. > draw a red line around zip codes and then not display ads to Facebook users who live in specific zip codes. This alone is really damn damning. I'm going to go out on a…

The "red line" wording is from the HUD press release. I don't think there is any red line in the Facebook UI, you input a list of zip codes. ( https://www.facebook.com/business/help/community/question/?i... )

Not true. I was able to draw actual red lines excluding zip codes from seeing a housing ad. But this was 8-10 months ago. It’s possible they changed the UI.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#108

Post by maratd » Sat, Aug 18, 2018, 9:17 PM UTC

nv-vn wrote: post #98

JamisonM wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that the public and the courts are correctly recognizing that the excuse that a human never sees something doesn't exempt an organization of the regulatory burden borne by companies where the work is done proportionally more by humans. If Facebook, Google, et. al want to run advertising companies they have to properly conduct themselves in the current regulatory environment, if their competitive advantage rea…

>I think it is reasonable to say that everyone should agree that if there are rules they should be universally applied What happens if the rules are bad rules? E.g. if it's illegal for Facebook to allow advertisements for marijuana dispensaries on a federal level? Clearly that's not something we'd want to see universally applied.

What exactly is your argument? That if there's a bad law on the books, we shouldn't have laws?

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#109

Post by maratd » Sat, Aug 18, 2018, 9:20 PM UTC

perl4ever wrote: post #65

astura wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compliance. If they lock down microtargetting for housing related ads and have some code to flag housing ads posted in different categories they become compliant with the law. Nobody says they have to be 100% perfect to be compliment.

Sure, but if you think the law serves a purpose, then one may ask whether being technically compliant is success.

It's a start. They weren't even doing that.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#110

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Aug 18, 2018, 9:21 PM UTC

AdamM12 wrote: post #95

null000 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is similar to if the NYT ran discriminatory ads - which is an actual case from the 1980s and resulted in both notable fines, and the NYT having humans review housing ads for discriminatory practices, such as having an unrepresentably white set of models in housing ads (from one of the propublica links in some of the other comments). Same goes for craigslist, which also has to screen housing ads. I'd argue both a…

No only person that is responsible is the person who placed the ad. Facebook didn't select the target market and write up the copy.

[deleted]